Mitt Romney is like a spoiled brat who can dish it but can’t take it. Now he’s calling a truce and asking President Obama and his campaign not to attack his business record. Um, didn’t he say that his business record uniquely qualifies him for the job? So, if we aren’t looking at his business record, can’t see his archival records from the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, or see his tax returns or get a half-way decent explanation of his offshore accounts, can’t talk about Romneycare, exactly what is there left to debate him on? We certainly can’t go after his stint as governor, since that he was more of a moderate governor than “severely conservative,” so what’s left? The massive document shredding that occurred right before he left the governorship? LMAO. Two black eyes and a kick in the gut and he’s screaming Mommy. This is too funny. I guarantee the Obama campaign is rolling over with laughter at his request. Mitt Romney has the hubris to make such a request.

“Our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature,” Romney said, according to excerpts of an upcoming interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd released Friday.

Romney said he would prefer the campaigns “only talk about issues,” and claimed that “our ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … We haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul offered up a broader take on whether Romney was really suggesting that his career at Bain Capital — the crux of his argument that he is better equipped to handle the economy — should be considered off-limits. Source: Talking Points Memo

I can’t wait to hear the response from the Obama campaign. Um, it looks like Harry Reid is winning, on the charge about Romney not paying taxes for 10 years. Wait until we get to the debates. He’ll be peeing on himself behind the podium. The Democratic attacks on his Bain Capital records and taxes have left Mitt Romney battered and bruised and he can’t take the heat in the kitchen. Dang, even Sarah Palin is a lot tougher than this softie and not as arrogant.

Mitt Romney’s prospects for the presidency just got a little dimmer with the admission of a campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul in response to a pro-Obama attack ad which blames the presumptive nominee for the death of a laid-off steelworker’s wife: If that family had lived in Massachusetts, it would have been covered by the former governor’s universal health care law. Um, isn’t this the same candidate who says he wants to repeal Romneycare’s big sister Obamacare? Duh, same thing right? SMH. Mitt Romney reminds me a lot of Foghorn Leghorn, always a loudmouth even as he gets his ass kicked.

“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Andrea Saul, Romney’s campaign press secretary, said during an appearance on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President [Barack] Obama’s economy. Source

The Priorities USA Action ad, features Joe Soptic, who was laid off from a plant owned by Bain Capital, discussing his wife’s illness and eventual death. He said his family lost health insurance after he lost his job. Saul went on to say the ad was “despicable.” But, please tell me, how do you praise Romneycare and slam Obamacare? Mitt Romney and his team have an uncanny skill of shooting themselves in the foot with every attack from the Obama campaign. This is the man you want to put in the White House? This comes as Ron Haskins, GOP welfare reform architect, blasts Romney’s current ad accusing President Obama of “gutting welfare reform.”

The Boston Globe is out with a new story about Mitt Romney’s retroactive retirement from Bain Capital. The report shows Mitt Romney played a far greater role after he supposedly left in 1999 than he has let on.

Interviews with a half-dozen of Romney’s former partners and associates, as well as public records, show that he was not merely an absentee owner during this period. He signed dozens of company documents, including filings with regulators on a vast array of Bain’s investment entities. And he drove the complex negotiations over his own large severance package, a deal that was critical to the firm’s future without him, according to his former associates.

[…]

“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his giving up of that control,” said one former associate, who, like some other Romney associates, spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the company. Source

Frank Rich slams Mitt Romney on his failure to release more tax returns saying, “the bigger problem is that his secrecy keeps accentuating all the mysteries in his resume.” Damn. Remember those hard drives in Massachusetts that he erased as he left office?

Frank Rich: “Is there any major Republican, from George Will to Bill Kristol to Haley Barbour, who has not called for Romney to release more returns? Surely Romney himself is asking for more than two years of returns from the veep prospects he’s vetting. What Mitt doesn’t seem to realize is that whatever embarrassments are in his tax returns, the bigger problem is that his secrecy keeps accentuating all the mysteries in his resume: the erased hard drives he left behind when leaving office as Massachusetts governor; what exactly he did as a longtime lay official in the Mormon church; and, of course, what exactly he did and didn’t do at Bain and, for that matter, when he was there and not there. If he keeps trying to wait out the tax storm, it will keep growing — hitting a new peak when he finally releases the one additional year of tax returns he has agreed to disclose, and another when his veep pick is asked to release his or her tax returns.

It’s funny we aren’t hearing more about those erased hard drives in Massachusetts in the election cycle. It seems to tie into the whole “mystery” surrounding Mitt Romney’s qualifications for president.

Here’s another’s pundit’s take on the Romney Tax Returngate:

Steve Kornacki: “Maybe the calendar offers a clue about Romney’s thinking. In just over a week, the London Olympics will kick off. If you’re going to release more embarrassing tax returns, maybe that would be the ideal time?”

How does one retire retroactively? Um, ask the Romney campaign. You see, the Bain Capital fallout continues and it’s getting crazier by the day. Ed Gillespie, a senior campaign adviser for Mitt Romney, appeared on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning to answer questions about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, well, let’s just say I’m shaking my head at the new excuse they have come up with — Mitt Romney retroactively retired from Bain Capital. That makes the Obama onslaught justifiable. This was Ed Gillespie’s excuse why Mitt Romney wasn’t responsible for the company’s actions during the time in which he remained as CEO and president — during the Olympics.

GREGORY: He was still financially linked to Bain. And of course, a lot his fortune is due to his time with Bain. Even when he was on leave, does he stand by the business decisions that were made by the firm he created?

GILLESPIE: He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain. Source

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we try to spin the truth. The Obama campaign opened a can of “whoop ass” on the Romney campaign, particularly as they stood firm with their assertion that Romney “retired” from Bain Capital in February 1999, only for previously unreported SEC documents to surface suggesting that Romney did in fact remain the CEO and chairman of the company while he claimed to be away at the Olympics. Once again, the Romney campaign has left more questions than answers.

Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, said it best — “If you want to claim Bain Capital as your calling card to the White House then defend what happened to Bain Capital and what happened to those jobs that went overseas, those jobs that were actually cut and eliminated and the companies that went into bankruptcy. And the very companies that went into bankruptcy while Bain was still getting paid, same philosophy that led to him advocating that the auto industry go bankrupt.”

Gillespie also danced around the whole issue of Mitt Romney releasing more than two years tax returns saying he has been very transparent. Um, really? Are they also redefining what transparent means? The Boston Globe reports Romney’s account of his departure from Bain Capital has evolved.” So, he takes credit for the so-called good things that Bain Capital did, but runs like Usain Bolt and Flo Jo from the bad things. This is the same way he will run this country if given the opportunity. More like a “scalded cat” as Sen. Dick Durbin says. The new explanation from the Romney camp is being ridiculed on Twitter and it won’t stop the Democrats and the Obama campaign either.

The Republicans should be rightly worried about the onslaught of negative news about Mitt Romney and his stint at Bain Capital. There is too much doubt about his claims and that weakens him as a candidate. That’s exactly what the Obama campaign wants and I am sure the kitchen sink will land in Romney’s campaign headquarters at any minute. You see, no matter who he picks as a running mate, he or she won’t be able to stem the bleeding. If he picks Condoleezza Rice, the Obama campaign will pull George W. Bush out of its back pocket. Instead of crying that the Obama campaign has gone negative, why not find compelling answers to refute their claims? Don’t come across as a crybaby. Karma is a bitch. Look what Mitt Romney did to Newt Gingrich during the primaries.

Yesterday, the Boston Globe and Mother Jones released two pretty damning reports about Mitt Romney’s stint at Bain. While the Boston Globe article had nothing new, it was still damaging because it raised the question about when did Romney really sever ties with Bain Capital — 1999 or thereafter. He was still pulling in a salary, $100,000 to be exact, and his name still appeared on SEC filing documents. You can’t tell me that we live in the greatest country in the world and it takes a year or more to get a CEO’s name off a document if he has left the company. The reality is that whether he had no dealings with the company after 1999 or not, the facts don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s all human nature. The nugget of doubt has been planted in the minds of many. You will recall then-candidate Barack Obama said repeatedly that he was a Christian and not a Muslim. Um, people still think he’s a Muslim.

A senior Romney strategist said Thursday that the campaign had a plan and wouldn’t be distracted from implementing it, despite pressure from outsiders. The strategist called the new charges part of an old line of attack that had already been thoroughly aired.

“We went through this in the primary,” the adviser said. “You have a lot of people inside the Beltway, who like to sit back and be armchair quarterbacks, strategists who talk to you and don’t go on the record. We have a plan. We know what the plan is, and we’re going to implement the plan.”

The adviser added: “We aren’t reacting to what the Obama campaign does. … We aren’t reacting to what Republican strategists do. We’ve got a plan to win. We know what it takes and that’s what we’re going to do. All of this hew and cry, you know, from the bedwetters who get to sit on the sidelines, aren’t going to affect what we’re going to do and our plan.”

In many ways, the Globe story didn’t break a lot of new ground, as several truth squad reports pointed out. It simply renewed focus on the fact that Romney has always stated that he technically left Bain in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, while maintaining legal and financial ties to the company that didn’t include actively managing its affairs or investments. Source: Politico

Romney and his team haven’t found a compelling way to respond to this mess, that continues to grow and intensify daily. What does that say about the stature of this candidate? You see, the Obama campaign is winning at defining Mitt Romney on its terms. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich painted Mitt Romney in a box and the Obama campaign is taking up where they left off. Bain Capital, his offshore bank accounts, his tax returns and Romneycare will continue to be fodder for the Obama campaign to attack and chip away at him. Sorry, next to George W. Bush, Mitt Romney comes across as the bumbling idiot. I guess Seamus on the top of his station wagon is the least of his worries.

Mitt Romney departure date at Bain Capital is in question and he’s pushing back against a report in the Boston Globe saying he left in 1999 and not 2002 as SEC filings seem to indicate. Who do you believe? A flip-flopper or the SEC documents?

CNN: “Roberta Karmel, a former SEC commissioner who served during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, said the documents raise questions about Romney’s role at Bain after the GOP contender says he left the company.

“It’s a criminal offense to file a false document with the SEC,” Karmel said. “And if that isn’t true, then he made a false filing, which is something I don’t think he wants to claim.” She continued: “If he listed himself and he was getting paid, he was legally responsible.” “Either you’re the owner or you’re not the owner,” Karmel added. “You can’t have it both ways.”

If Mitt Romney lied on SEC documents, then he committed a felony. That would feed into the notion of why he is stalling on releasing his tax returns from previous years. How do we separate fact from fiction? Damn, the Obama campaign is reportedly saying Mitt Romney is a liar and a potential criminal.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows President Obama expands lead over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to six percentage points, at 49% to 43%, as voters became slightly more optimistic about the economy. The polls found that the number of Americans who thought the country was on the wrong track dropped five percentage points to 58%. President Obama’s approval rating inched up one point to 48%, while the number of Americans who disapprove of his job performance fell three percentage points to 47%.

I don’t put much stock in these early polls but the Obama campaign must be pleased that he seems to be weathering the “storm” on the economy, despite the weak June jobs report. Campaign donations continue to lag behind the Romney campaign.

The Obama campaign has dinged Mitt Romney particularly on the issue of his offshore bank accounts and his failure to release tax returns for more than one year. They have made significant headway in raising the “trust issue” about Romney because it seems as though he has something to hide, plus they have hammered away at his years at Bain Capital.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which comprised of 1,154 adults, including 885 registered voters, was taken between Thursday and Monday, the same week the Bureau of Labor Statistics report was released showing the unemployment rate holding at 8.2% with the unemployment rate in the black community inching up to 14.4%.

The Boston Globe is looking into Mitt Romney’s business dealings with “junk bond king” Michael Milken, who almost brought down Wall Street years ago.

“What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.”

“But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as ‘junk bonds.'”

Of course, the right doesn’t want anyone to look into Mitt Romney’s business background, which he claims makes him more than qualified for the presidency. They would rather trash Obama every step of the way, down to what he ate as a child.

Mitt Romney new best friend, former adversary Newt Gingrich is on “Meet the Press” trashing Obama, saying the president “picking a fight on the economy” is a recipe for disaster. He also added that he is the worst president on job creation since the Great Depression. President Obama is a hypocrite, in my view, for being in bed with the same private equity groups he has been assailing. Gingrich says Obama can’t fight over debt because he has created more debt and can’t fight over jobs because he hasn’t created any. Damn, that’s a slap but it rings hollow coming from someone who attacked Mitt Romney mercilessly on the campaign trail.

Gov. Romney drove up the largest per capita debt of any state in the U.S. His record isn’t a record of increasing private job creation, but the opposite, that’s according to the Democratic surrogate, Gov. Martin O’Malley. David Gregory reminded Newt Gingrich of his statement that his tenure at Bain Capital was a character issue. Um, Gingrich is dancing around that. He’s a less credible surrogate for Mitt Romney as Ron Paul would ever be.

Newt Gingrich claims Mitt Romney will get 40% of the Hispanic vote, as George W. Bush did, because Hispanics are more concerned about jobs, housing and education, not immigration. That’s a very bold prediction that won’t come to fruition, unless Obama absolutely bombs over the next few months. He also said Mitt Romney has a bold plan for educating poor blacks, Latinos and whites.

Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama has created more jobs in less than four years than George W. Bush did in eight years.